The sum of all things
by Skyknight1987
Summary: "That is the whole chicken and egg question all over again, isn't it?" Zarm grinned. "Did I make you as you are? Or did you make me as I am? Or are we all just cogs in a much larger, much more intricate machine, each with our own part to play? And when all is said and done, does it really make any difference?"


**Disclaimer: Don't own this franchise, yadda yadda.**

**This is just something that cropped into my head, and it grew until it simply wouldn't go away. I finally decided to get it on paper and out of the way.**

**I used to love the Captain Planet cartoons as a kid, but I always felt that they were too simplistic. This one in my perspective on Zarm's role and his true nature.**

* * *

"Well, that's that then," Zarm said idly, leaning against the demolished wall of Dr. Blight's latest hideout as he watched the remains of his latest plan to stir up unrest fall apart around him. Twenty feet away, Wheeler was wrestling Rigger into submission while Linka and Gi were taking care of Dr. Blight. Zarm noted that Looten Plunder was conspicuously absent, having slipped out when the fighting behind and leaving his comrades to fight a futile battle, providing him with the perfect distraction with which to make his escape. Within minutes, it was all over.

"So what've you got to say now?" Wheeler challenged as the Planeteers surrounded him, waiting to make a move. Any move.

"Congratulations?" Zarm offered, looking oddly unconcerned by the fact that he had been foiled by five teenagers. He pushed himself on his feet and the Planeteers tensed, expecting an attack, but Zarm simply turned and started walking away.

"You've earned yourselves a break," he called over his shoulder. "So…until we meet again."

"Wait, that's it?" Gi blurted out. The Planeteers traded surprised looks, surprised that it had ended so quickly.

"Well, yes. For now that is," Zarm said with a raised eyebrow as he turned around to look at her. "Why? Were you expecting more?" His gaze travelled to her bruised cheek and onto the gash on Kwame's arm and finally to Wheeler, who was nursing a set of sore knuckles. "I rather thought you'd be thankful that it wasn't any worse. Fine, I'll up the stakes if it is getting boring for you."

"Do your worst," Linka challenged. "We'll beat you every time. Just like we always have."

"Maybe you will," Zarm shrugged. "I wouldn't be surprised. You _are_ five of your kind on a planet of six billion after all. But then that is the whole point of what I do."

"Uh, _what_ exactly is the whole point of what you do?" Gi asked dubiously.

"Survival of the fittest," Zarm said simply. "You demonstrate your ability to survive, then you have earned the right to keep living. As for those who fail, well… you know what happens to them."

"Don't you ever get tired of this crap?" Wheeler asked, eyes narrowed. "I mean all this endless fighting, over and over again. And all for what? Destroying shit just for the hell of it?"

"Don't you ever get tired of chasing women?" Zarm rebutted. "Of course you don't. You are a male. Males chase females. It's what you do." He shrugged. "Well, _I'm_ the spirit of chaos and destruction. I disrupt and destroy the existing order of things. Natural, social it doesn't matter. When any kind of order reaches its peak, or even before that, I bring it down so that a new order can rise in its place. It's what I _do_, my reason for being."

The Planeteers traded glances. "Doesn't it bother you that we've been foiling you at every turn, for so long?" Ma-Ti asked.

"Well, well _somebody's_ got an overinflated sense of self importance," Zarm drawled. "I'm surprised to hear it from you kid. I thought you of all people would know better."

"Explain," Kwame demanded.

"Fine, let me tell it to you in a way that your tiny minds can comprehend," Zarm said coolly. "I've walked the earth since before there was a solid surface to walk on. I was there when the first single cell organism crawled out of the primordial pool. And I will still be here when it falls into the sun. In comparison the whole time that you've been fighting me, your _entire lifetime_ means less to me than the blink of an eye. So I invite you to contemplate just how _insignificant_ I find you, and your petty victories."

Silence.

"So the purpose of your existence is nothing more than to goad humanity into destroying itself along with the earth?" Linka asked slowly.

"Not at all," Zarm replied. "I'm not out to _destroy_. I just present certain, _challenges._ The challenges themselves vary in scope. They can be anything from insignificant to enormous, subtle to glaring, and any permutation and combination of those. The fittest survive. The others…don't."

"But the damage you could cause…" Gi whispered. "You could destroy entire eco systems."

"Destroy the Earth?" Zarm snorted. "I remember the earth when it was nothing more than smoke, ash and lava. Anything you humans could do is tiny by comparison. Huge to you maybe but tiny to me. The earth would eventually repair the damage. It would take time of course, decades, centuries, even millennia. But what is a few thousand years to someone who has lived for millions of years, with millions more to go?" He shrugged, sounding almost bored. "There is only the question of how much damage could be caused. May be a good chunk of humanity will be killed. Maybe all of it. It wouldn't be the first mass extinction I've engineered."

"The dinosaurs?" Gi gasped. "_You're_ the one who wiped out the dinosaurs?"

"You're giving me too much credit," Zarm said airily. "I didn't wipe out the dinosaurs per se. I simply made life difficult for them. Very difficult indeed. It started off small. Little annoyances here and there. A water source vanishing here, a climate change there, that sort of thing. Small problems that accumulated until they became _very _big problems. Most of the dinosaurs died because they couldn't adapt. But some of them did and they survived."

"But why?" Gi gasped. "Why would you do that?"

"Why?" Zarm asked with a raised eyebrow. "Because they had reached their pinnacle, that's why. They had become the dominant species on the planet and they were starting to stagnate. There was no further room for them to grow. No areas for them to expand into. They had reached the limits of their potential, and had become all that they were capable of being under the circumstances. It was time for a change, and change never comes unless it is forced. I should know, I am the embodiment of change."

"So you just wiped out an entire species?" Ma-Ti said, his eyes wide. "That's horrific, even for you."

"It would be horrific for a human, certainly." Zarm said calmly. "But just because I _look _like a human and _talk_ like a human, you seem to be under the mistaken impression that I _think_ and _feel_ like a human." He smiled humorlessly. "Well here is a wakeup call for you. I am _not_ human. I'm not even mortal, at least not in the way that you comprehend mortality, so why would you expect me to act like one?" He grinned. "There are more things between heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy, young man, and the world is much bigger than your perception of it. Besides why are _you_ complaining? That extinction was what allowed humanity to become the dominant species on the planet. None of you would have existed if I hadn't done what I did. Everything that you know, everything that you see and are, is because of me."

Another silence.

"So why step it up now?" Kwame asked slowly. "If you have been around all this time, why would you choose to set humanity against each other _now_?"

"I've always been here, kid," Zarm said. "Every war, every major conflict, righteous or otherwise, whenever some human decides that they deserve more than what they have, I have always been there to give them a helpful _push_ over the edge. It's just that no one except you knows that I even exist. Sure people have _suspected_ over the centuries, but then that was always more of a desire to find answers in a higher power than actual confirmation. You'll find references to me and Gaia in mythology from every religion that has ever existed. None of them are even close to accurate. The Norse legends had a name for me. They called me…"

"…Loki," Gi finished, "The Norse god of mischief and strife."

Zarm grinned and gave a mocking bow. "The part about being the god of strife was the closest they came to getting it right," he said. "And even _that_ barely scratches the surface of my true nature. Everything else in those legends, and all others, is just embellishment. Humans trying to describe in words something that is _far_ beyond their ability to comprehend."

"So what _are _you exactly?" Gi asked. "And what happens if you just _stop_?"

"You know, if you keep asking me questions like this you are going to find out the answers to questions you wished you never knew," Zarm replied. "I could answer all of your questions. In fact I could answer every question any scientist and philosopher has ever contemplated on regarding the meaning of life and the existence of the universe. But what would be the point?" He shrugged. "Your minds simply aren't _capable_ of comprehending what I could tell you. It would be like trying to explain the workings of a space shuttle or a nuclear reactor to a housefly."

"Is that how you view humanity?" Ma-Ti asked. "Like a fly?"

"You couldn't _possibly_ comprehend how I view humanity, kid," Zarm said dismissively.

"Try us," Kwame said steadily. "We might surprise you."

Zarm chuckled. "The last time a human surprised me was when some utterly unremarkable hominid figured out that fire was an effective deterrent for predators and that it would give his tribe an advantage if they could control it. Back then they thought that fire was just another creature and that it could be sustained and pacified by the offering of food in the form of dry wood. It was a game changer for the human race, one that would allow them to rise far beyond their assigned station in the life cycle. I had never seen such adaptation; a species evolving mentally instead of physically. Humans weren't the first to use some form of tools, or to use the elements to their advantage. Ants made colonies in the earth, beavers built dams, birds and fish used currents to navigate. But no living creature had ever attempted to use fire, much less control and manipulate it for their ends. And unlike other species, every human generation refined on its knowledge before passing it on to the next generation, making better tools and devising better hunting strategies in order to kill their prey. Of course, it wasn't long before humans figured that they could use their improved tools and strategies just as effectively to kill each other."

"And you had something to do with that too, didn't you?" Wheeler said sourly.

Zarm shrugged. "I may have…planted the suggestion. But I can't make someone do something that is against their nature, and I can't interfere with free will, as you must have figured out by now. I simply use what already exists in the minds and hearts of people. All I can do is open doors, and point the way. Anyone who goes down that road does so on their own volition."

"You never went out of your way to get any other species to fight among themselves," Ma-Ti said. "Why humans?"

"Humans adapt and evolve within the microenvironment of society, just as other creatures do in the wild," Zarm said. "And they respond to the same stimulation; survive or perish. Other creatures adapt physically, so I challenge them physically. Humans adapt mentally and societally. So I test the strength of the structures that civilizations are built on. The ones who are found lacking perish, and their resources are used by the survivors to build societies with even greater complexities."

"And your attempts to engineer widespread anarchy are just…stimulation to evolve?" Linka asked. "Humans are the dominant species, just like the dinosaurs once were, so this is your way of trying to force a change?"

"Correct," Zarm said lazily. "There simply aren't enough resources to sustain the population growth rate. So this will result in one of two possible outcomes. Either humans will evolve and find ways to generate even more resources, which will buy them a brief window before the next shortfall; or the human population will be reduced to a sustainable level until it grows enough to once again tax the available resources. Or they'll just drive themselves to extinction." He shrugged. "That would leave the field clear for another species to take over. For all I know, I might have this exact same conversation with another bunch of primates, a couple million years from now. I wouldn't know. For all that I do to stimulate evolution, I cannot foresee what evolutionary path a species will take."

"But…there has to be a better way."

"Better way?" Zarm said with a raised eyebrow. "Kid, this is the natural order of things at its most basic level. The world is what it is. Closing off your eyes and ears to things that you don't want to acknowledge will not change the world. It'll just change your perspective of it. Like the blind men who wanted to know what an elephant was like. They touched a different part of the elephant and came up with different descriptions. They were all right, except they were all wrong. The one thing they couldn't do was to merge their perspectives in order to see the whole picture. It's a human limitation."

"It's still…wrong," Ma-Ti insisted.

Zarm looked at him almost pityingly. "Right and wrong only exist within the framework of society, and society is subject to changes and variations, just like any geographical terrain which influences how the creatures inhabiting it evolve," he replied. "I don't live in the society. I exist outside of it. I don't even have a defined form. Neither does Gaia. The forms we take in your eyes are the sum total of what every human on the planet would expect the spirit of nature and the spirit of destruction to look like. A tiger or a woodpecker would see us very differently." He shook his head. "I would explain how it works but…you wouldn't understand. At my level, there is no right and wrong. There is only what works, and what doesn't. There are no absolutes in the universe, kid. There are only varying levels of complexity."

Gi stared at him. "I don't get you," she said at last. "You said that you walked the earth long before life existed, that you had _shaped_ life as it is, and now you're saying that all you do to spread conflict is use what already existed, as if you weren't the one who created it. First you say that you shaped life, and then you imply that the way life turned out is the only way it _could_ have turned out. Like you had no control over it."

"That is the whole chicken and egg question all over again isn't it?" Zarm grinned. "Did _I_ make _you_ as you are? Or did _you_ make _me_ as I am? Or are we all just cogs in a much larger, much more _intricate_ machine, each with our own part to play? And therein lies the answer to your question, kid. About what would happen if I stopped." He waved his hands. "You might as well expect gravity to repel instead of attract, or for fire to cool instead of heat. I am not a living creature; I'm a force of nature. I can't stop doing what I do because it is the reason why I exist. And I can't be anything else, just like nothing else can be me. There are no answers to why I am what I am. I simply _am._"

The silence that followed was the longest yet. Finally Wheeler sighed, "Somehow, I would have preferred not to know most of what you told us. Or all of it really. It's easier that way."

"Don't say I didn't warn you," Zarm said calmly.

"So, what does it mean for us?" Linka asked sounding uncharacteristically hesitant.

"It means that the sun is going to rise tomorrow as it always has and you're going to go about your business as you always have," Zarm replied. "I am going to going to go back to making your life difficult and you are going to go back to trying to stop me. Maybe I'll win. Or maybe you will. Either way, my advice is, don't think too much on what I told you. As the firebug said, it's easier that way."

"But you're still going to destroy humanity, sooner or later," Kwame said slowly.

"Well," Zarm said with a careless shrug. "That's up to you, isn't it?"

And with that, he turned and faded away into the night, leaving the Planeteers rooted behind him.

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**Finally done. Can't believe this thing took up most of my Sunday.**

**Looking back, its shorter than most chapters I write, but at least it is out of my head.**

**Please share your thoughts. I would like to know how well, or not, I've written it.**


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